Promoting Health in Japan under the American Occupation ［1945-1952］ - the Design of the 8-Year Medical Education Program

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  • Nishimura Sey
    ［c／o Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1K7, Canada.］

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  • 8年制医師養成教育―GHQサムス准将の提案
  • 8ネンセイ イシ ヨウセイ キョウイク : GHQ サムス ジュンショウ ノ テイアン

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Abstract

  In 1945, the Committee for Investigation of Japanese Medical Science, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers ［SCAP］, proposed that future Japanese medical students receive a four-year liberal-arts pre-medical education, followed by four years of medical-technical training. The proposal was promoted by Colonel （later Brigadier-General） Crawford F. Sams, Chief, Public Health & Welfare Section, SCAP, and the Medical Education Council in the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Japanese Government.<br>  However, Professor Yoshishige Abe, Chairman of the Education Reform Committee of the Ministry of Education, and a former Minister of Education, refused to accept the proposal in light of impoverished post-war Japanese resources.<br>  The proposal was abandoned when the Civil Information & Education Section, and the Chief of Staff, SCAP, were both unwilling to issue directives to the Japanese Government to implement the proposal. The six-year medical education program, comprised of two years of liberal-arts pre-medical study and four years of medical-technical training within the individual medical schools, thus became the norm in post-war Japan.<br>  Since 2009, Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, M.D., Honorary Director of the St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, has been advocating for a “Graduate Medical School” attached to the St. Luke’s International Hospital. This graduate medical school model would accept students on completion of at least a bachelor’s degree. If actualized, it would be a noteworthy trial of an eight-year medical education program, almost seventy years after it was first proposed in Japan.

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